Within all food production, not least in the dairy industry, a meticulous cleaning of all production equipment is an imperative requirement for good production. Careless hygiene may involve serious consequences, since milk is a perfect nutrient bed where bacteria rapidly multiply. When foods are produced, such as milk products that are aseptic, i.e. they can be stored without refrigeration, all parts of the plant must moreover be sterilised after cleaning and before production begins. This also applies to so-called ESL products (Extended Shelf Life), i.e. products with extended shelf life that are kept in cold storage.
Today, most dairy equipment is cleaned using automatic cleaning CIP (Cleaning In Place). In this instance, the cleaning takes place in circulation cycle and complies with a predetermined programme where different cleaning solutions, temperatures and circulation times are carefully tried out and specified. The cleaning is followed by a pre-sterilisation using hot water in the same circulation cycle.
In the developed world, extremely large units have recently been made operational for the production of foods. Ever increasing quantities of food are produced for a steadily growing market. As a result, the demands on available production time have also increased. Uninterrupted production times of up to 20 hours per day are at present not uncommon occurrences. In order to be able to increase the available production time further, it is necessary to shorten the time needed for cleaning the equipment without, to this end, any deterioration in the effectivity of the cleaning methods. Naturally, long production times also require that the cleaning operation be highly effective, since long production times give increased so-called fouling of the product on hot surfaces. For aseptic products and ESL products, a programme for cleaning and pre-sterilisation takes more than three hours to complete today.